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Geocaching And Rv Travel


MisterNixter

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I am new to geocaching and love it! We travel fulltime in an RV and I think it is the perfect hobby for our lifestyle. We publish a newspaper for RVers and will be doing a feature story on geocaching in our next issue, which is at the printer now. We'll also have the story on our website at www.gypsyjournal.net as soon as the printed edition hits the mail, about the first of the year. I was wondering how many other RVing geocachers we have out there? :blink:

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We pull a 34 ft 5er. Not full timers, yet. When we travel we seldom have a final destination. We decide maybe the night before where we want to go, go there, stay until we decide to leave, and then go on to the next place, wherever it might be. We've been caching since 2002 and each summer trip has been planned where to cache. We don't visit relatives when we travel. It's just go someplace and see what's there. Caching is a great opportunity to see what's in places. Last summer we didn't travel too far away from home, new grandbaby and all. In the spring we usually hit New Orleans and plan our caching days while there. In 2003 we traveled to CO, WY, and SD to hit some caches. The one in particular we wanted to hit was "The Wild Bunch Cache" in central WY. Year before that we traveled to the Smokeys and cached along the way.

We're done camping for the winter. Planning the end of March trip to the Gulf Coast, just not sure where yet. Will depend if there are any special caches we want to hit. Haven't thought too much about summer trips yet, altho NM and AZ may be a possibililty. We'll just have to see what caches are out there at the time.

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I have over 700 finds and probably a third of those have been done on trips. My wife is not a geocacher but very understanding. We have a Roadtrek van type RV. Has everything you would want except space. We live across Puget Sound from Seattle. Summer before this last one we traveled to the East Coast. Had planned to go down the coast but the Hurricane's sent us inland. This year we made just a few shorter trips. One down the Oregon Coast where the caches are as good as the view. After that we took another short trip up through BC to Jasper and then down to Banff. Found lots of caches on our way to Whistler. Then very few to Jasper down to Banff. Lots of caches in the Cranbrook area. The little van is self contained but I am a little careful going down some of the back roads. It has fairly hight ground clearance but being on a Dodge chassis it takes a 40 acre field to turn around in. Being almost 80, I am also careful where I look. I plan in great detail where we are going, where we will stay and have all the caches loaded on my iQue, 76C and 76S and well as the printer friendly cache pages. My wife doesn't drive the van but reads the caches printout as we are traveling to the next cache. Not sure where we will go this coming summer. Maybe back to my home state of Illinois. Good Geocaching on the Road. Dick, W7WT

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Not sure where we will go this coming summer. Maybe back to my home state of Illinois.

And where abouts in IL would "home" be?

Springfield area here. Some pretty good caches here and some lame ones too.

Yes, I am from the "Sucker State". I was born in Bible Grove, Illinois. I call Louisville my hometown. It is south of Effingham. I went my freshman year at Eastern Illinois in 1942-43 before inlisting in Naval Aviation. Came back in 1946 and got married and graduated in l948. Taught HS electronics and aeronautics at Freeport H. S. 1948 to 1957. After getting an advanced degree at U. of Nebr. we moved to Bremerton, WA in 1959 where I have taught electronics at Olympic College until retiring in 1986. Got my MS at Bradley U. in Peoria during the summers of 49,50 and 51. My wife has a niece that lives in Pittsfield. My wife graduated from nursing school in Olney which has a lot of great caches. This is probably more than you really wanted to know. Dick, W7WT BTW I looked at your profile and I found some of the caches in Hannibal that you found.

Edited by W7WT
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RVers were actually one of the people I heard of geocaching from. Someone had mentioned it one time before on my website I used to run before, called "Woodsters Outdoors". Didn't think much about it then. Then in 2003, my in laws who own a Class A motorhome, were at a rally in Myrtle Beach and met a couple there that was into the geocaching. My mother in law thought it sounded neat and told my wife about it. My wife told her that i mentioned it one time before and we started looking into it more. A little bit later, and we bought our GPS and was searching! I think it's the perfect past time for fulltimers. Keeps you active and healthy. And especially keeps you from getting bored. I don't forsee GC adding anything about the caches and if you can get a rig close by. I thinks it's a cool idea though. Perhaps someone can start a "GeoCamping" website and people can recommend places and the sort

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I think it's an ideal combination. Geo13, the top NC based finder spends half the year traveling in his. Team CHB has discussed it on several of our daylong and weekend jaunts as a great way to spend a week traveling and caching. Now if we can only convince the wives to let us go! :blink:

 

PS-Hmmm-24 hour record bah! Let's go for a 72 hour record. I mean as long as you are in the vehicle when the cache is found and your name gets signed to the log it counts as a find right? (just kidding sortof.... :blink: )

Edited by wimseyguy
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I was just telling my son yesterday, that when the weather is warmer, that we ought to throw the tent and other camping stuff in the back of the jeep and head over towards the western part of the state (NC), which less than 2 hours away and just cache away. But i don't think he would be able to withstand that much caching...

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We have a 25 foot travel trailer. We take the trailer out from April-October as much as possible. We planned specific campgrounds to stay at this past camping season, and our choices were partially based on availability of caches in the area we picked. We were able to find geocaches in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and 1 in Maine, all while camping. Next summer, we hope to finish up the New England states, at least. So, yes RV's and geocaching go great together!

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We are not full time RV'er yet, but we have a van conversion with a stand up roof, shower, potti, kitchen sink and all. It is the same length as a full size van, so not a lot of problem for us with parking. When we go on a trip, I do PQ for areas along our route, put them in Streets & Trips. The laptop sets on the doghouse with the GPS attached , and the cache pages loaded in the PDA. As we drive along, we can see the caches on the laptop and pick the ones to get to. We have seen some unusual and little known areas. I think one of the best parts of geocaching is the points of interest that hiders have directed us to.

Geocaching and RV are a good match, we have reservations at the state park for the Texas Challenge 2005 .

While we have camped in 47 of the lower 48, I wish we known about this hobby (addiction) a couple of years sooner. It was actually because of getting lost on a trip, and using out of date maps, that we found out about geocaching. I was researching GPS receivers that I found this web site.

Works for us.

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I think it would be a blast to RV across the country and go geocaching.

 

I just can't afford an RV right now :angry:

Hey you got that big 'Burbon, the tow vehicle is the big cost. Find a cheap used Travel Trailer, I would check out the RV storage places. They usually have a bulliten board with units for sale.

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We currently have a 22' Arctic Fox Travel Trailer. In the summer we will find a campground 50 or 100 miles away, set up base camp and cache the area. We also travel to other states and combine caching with the trips.

 

I have no laptop and we are famous for not sticking to an itinerary. I use local Libraries and cyber cafes' to get cache info in an area.

 

A trend we have noticed is that more and more private RV parks are offering broad band connection via wire or wireless. Many also have PC's for customer use in the office.

 

Currently I am looking for the perfect wireless ISP.

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We don't have an RV and may never get one, but we do go to alot of horse shows with the trailer. Sometimes there is room to unhook and travel with just the truck, but sometimes we have to go caching with the whole rig. It can really make things tricky, even with our two horse. I tried to go caching with a friend's rig (Introducing him to the sport). He's got a ford f350 with a 4 horse head-to-head gooseneck. We couldn't even fit into the parking spot and had to back a half mile down the road to get out.

 

Now I try and unhook before I go anywhere.

 

 

Joe Smith

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I am not a full-timer but hope to be someday. My wife, daughter, and I try and get out as often as we can. I always load up my GPS and PDA with geocaches before a trip so we can have some fun on the side. Our last short trip to El Capitan in California found us within bicycling distance of a couple of caches. Needless to say we had a great time relaxing and exploring over the weekend.

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Hi Nick,

 

Last saw you at Escapade. Tom Marlatt did a seminar on Geocaching that was very well attended. A year earlier, boondocking in MI I heard Marlatt talking about it and got interested enough to buy myself a Christmas present GPS in '04.

There are a lot of SKPs getting involved.

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